Maths on the Move

Was the mathematical modelling projecting the course of the pandemic too pessimistic, or were the projections justified? Matt Keeling tells our colleagues Ed Hill and Laura Guzmán-Rincón from SBIDER about some of the COVID models that fed into public policy.

In a tank in an underground laboratory in Cambridge a little green alga is executing a powerful breaststroke. It belongs to a group of algae called volvocales and it doesn't have a brain. So how can it coordinate its tiny little "arms" to perform motions worthy of an Olympic swimmer?
 
Algae going through their paces.  (Movies: Kirsty Wan and Raymond E. Goldstein, for more information see this paper)
 
In 2019 we visited Ray Goldstein, Schlumberger Professor of Complex Physical Systems at Cambridge, and he explained how algae manage to synchronise their so-called flagella, what this means for human physiology, and how it sheds light on the evolution of multi-cellular organisms from single-celled ones.
You can also read our article on Goldstein's work with volvocales, or watch an interview with Goldstein in this video.
 
 
Sound effects in this podcast are from Robinhood76 and 16HPanskaKanclirova_Victoria on freesound.org.
 
This podcast was partially funded by the European Mathematical Society.
 

What is infinity? What is infinity plus 100? What is infinity plus infinity?
Today's podcast was inspired by questions sent in by our friend Ash. To answer Ash's questions we take a trip to our favourite hotel, and we revisit our 2012 interview with our late boss, John D. Barrow, when we asked him – does infinity exist? Listen to the podcast to find out how infinity can corrupt the youth, why subtracting infinities can give you the right answer, and the weirdness that might be lurking out there in the cosmos...
Image created by FAVIO.
You can read more about infinity on plus.maths.org. And if you have a question about life, the universe and everything you'd like us to answer – email us as plus@maths.cam.ac.uk or contact us on twitter.

During the pandemic we all learnt to value the work of epidemiologists, whose mathematical models are essential in giving us an idea of where an epidemic might be heading. But just as there's a wide range of infectious diseases apart from COVID, so there's also a wide range of research questions epidemiologists ask.
In this podcast we talk to researchers Helena Stage and Laura Guzmán-Rincón about two such questions. One concerns the fact that a warming climate allows disease-carrying mosquitoes to live in places they previously found too cold. The other asks how you might detect a hidden outbreak of food poisoning coming, for example, from ready meals having been contaminated way back in the production chain. Both require clever mathematical ideas and ingenious detective work.      
Helena and Laura are members of the JUNIPER modelling consortium. We met them at a JUNIPER research meeting which took place at the University of Warwick in March 2023.
This podcast is part of our collaboration with JUNIPER, the Joint UNIversity Pandemic and Epidemic Response modelling consortium.
JUNIPER comprises academics from the universities of Cambridge, Warwick, Bristol, Exeter, Oxford, Manchester, and Lancaster, who are using a range of mathematical and statistical techniques to address pressing question about the control of COVID-19. You can see more content produced with JUNIPER here.

"What's a statistician's favourite sandwich filling?..."
Timandra Harkness – presenter, writer, comedian and Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society – told our friends Dan Aspel and Maha Kaouri her favourite maths joke in this episode of the Living Proof podcast from the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences.
Timandra Harkness
 
Timandra brilliantly chaired several sessions of the Communicating mathematics for the public event at the Newton Gateway to Mathematics. In this podcast Timandra spoke about how to make maths funny, and how she came to fall in love with mathematics from an arts and humanities background.
Oh and the punchline to Timandra's favourite joke? You'll have to listen to the podcast to find out!
 
00:00 – Introduction00:44 – Welcome, discussing Communicating mathematics for the public03:38 – Origins of Timandra's interest in maths, understanding "enough to ask the right questions"07:50 – Discussing Timandra's book Big Data – Does Size Matter?11:10 – Other current projects and shows, writing another book about "why everything is personalised"13:13 – Mingling an arts background with a mathematics focus, "coming out as a closet mathematician"17:10 – How do you make maths funny as a comedian? … "What's a statistician's favourite sandwich filling?"21:10 – Future projects
 
This podcast was inspired by the Communicating mathematics for the public event at the Newton Gateway to Mathematics in January 2023.
 
(If that joke tickles your funny bone – try this one!)
 
This podcast is part of our collaboration with the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI) – you can find all the content from our collaboration here. The INI is an international research centre and our neighbour here on the University of Cambridge's maths campus. It attracts leading mathematical scientists from all over the world, and is open to all. Visit www.newton.ac.uk to find out more.
 

Having empathy with your audience – with all your audiences – is the first step for making your content accessible. Hannah Thomas of the Government Analysis Function explained this in her brilliant talk at the Communicating mathematics for the public event at the Newton Gateway to Mathematics. Hannah's talk was full of insights and practical ideas on how to make all content published online easy to access and use for all users, regardless of impairment, medical condition or disability.
Our friends Dan Aspel and Maha Kaouri spoke to Hannah for this episode of the Living Proof podcast from the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences. Hannah told them about her work helping to make government data more accessible, the common pitfalls of data accessibility and tips and tricks that can help. They also find our why more people used to get married at the end of the tax year...
Hannah Thomas speaking at the Communicating mathematics for the public event
 
00:00 – Introduction00:44 – Welcome, discussing “Communicating Mathematics for the Public” (“as entertaining as Disneyland Paris and definitely more inspiring”)04:20 – All about Government Analysis Function, a love of data journalism, career history13:35 – Visualising data and making digital information accessible21:40 – Common accessibility pitfalls24:20 – Plans for the future… e-learning resources
 
This podcast was inspired by the Communicating mathematics for the public event at the Newton Gateway to Mathematics in January 2023. For more information we strongly recommend you watch Hannah's talk from that event, Data Visualisation and Digital Accessibility: What We Can Do to Help.
 
This podcast is part of our collaboration with the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI) – you can find all the content from our collaboration here. The INI is an international research centre and our neighbour here on the University of Cambridge's maths campus. It attracts leading mathematical scientists from all over the world, and is open to all. Visit www.newton.ac.uk to find out more.

We are very happy to work closely with our neighbours, the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI), to help explain, celebrate and publicise the research that happens at the Institute. But what challenges does that present? And why should it happen in the first place?
Following on from the Communicating mathematics for the public event at the Newton Gateway to Mathematics we spoke to the INI's Dan Aspel about our work in this episode of the Living Proof podcast. You can find all the content from our collaboration here.
Communicating from the mathematical frontiers - from plotting a path to the highest peak to exploring the hidden depths.
 
 
 
00:00 – Introduction00:44 – Welcome, discussing Communicating Mathematics for the Public, the importance of trustworthiness05:30 – Who you're speaking to vs what you're saying07:38 – Making higher mathematics accessible to audiences: "any bit of mathematics either comes from somewhere, or is going somewhere, or both"14:20 – Are there incommunicable subjects?16:55 – The rarity of maths "headlines"19:25 – The partnership between INI and Plus magazine – why is it important?23:25 – Are some topics inherently more interesting?25:26 – What is the end goal of maths communication? "I would love it if people could see how maths is everywhere… that maths is a language of rhythms and patterns"30:00 – Looking to the future
This podcast was inspired by the Communicating mathematics for the public event at the Newton Gateway to Mathematics in January 2023. You can watch our talk from that event, Trust, time and truth, that was about our collaboration with JUNIPER modelling consortium.
This podcast is part of our collaboration with the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI) – you can find all the content from our collaboration here. The INI is an international research centre and our neighbour here on the University of Cambridge's maths campus. It attracts leading mathematical scientists from all over the world, and is open to all. Visit www.newton.ac.uk to find out more.
 

Here at Plus, we were very grateful for Tom Irving's work during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was the Co-Head of the secretariat of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Modelling group (otherwise known as SPI-M). One of his responsibilities was writing the consensus statements that came out of SPI-M, summarising current understanding of the mathematical advice to the UK government. We found these incredibly useful when reporting on the pandemic.
We finally met Tom when we were both speaking at the Communicating mathematics for the public event in January 2023 at the Newton Gateway to Mathematics in Cambridge. In this podcast Tom tells us about providing a bridge between policy and mathematics, the importance of transparency, and the joy of the R number being discussed at the hairdressers.
This episode is part of On the mathematical frontline, a special series of the Plus podcast which explores the work of mathematicians grappling with the unprecedented challenge of studying a live pandemic unfolding in front of their eyes. In this series we interview our colleagues in the JUNIPER modelling consortium, whose research and insights have fed into SPI-M and SAGE - the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, both of whom advise the UK government on the scientific aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
You can watch Tom's talk on the Challenges in Communicating the Results of SAGE's Covid Modelling, and you can find all our work covering COVID-19 here.
This podcast is part of our collaboration with JUNIPER, the Joint UNIversity Pandemic and Epidemic Response modelling consortium.
JUNIPER comprises academics from the universities of Cambridge, Warwick, Bristol, Exeter, Oxford, Manchester, and Lancaster, who are using a range of mathematical and statistical techniques to address pressing question about the control of COVID-19. You can see more content produced with JUNIPER here.

If you've ever been lucky enough to meet David Spiegelhalter, or hear him talk in person or on TV or radio, you'll know he tells a great story. And the stories he told in his 2015 book Sex by numbers were fascinating and highly entertaining, as well giving us the tools to critically assess the statistics we read every day in the news. And sex is back in the news as the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles that featured in his book is being conducted again this year. Who knows what stories will come out of the next survey?
We were very happy to start 2023 with catching up with David (the first time in person since the pandemic!) at the Communicating mathematics for the public event that we were both speaking at in the Newton Gateway to Mathematics in Cambridge. We hope you enjoy this interview with him from 2015, where he gives us some of his favourite snippets from the book, and some easy ways you can think more critically about statistics. (You can also watch our interview as a video or read the associated article.)

The world needs to move to renewable energy sources, such as solar or wind. The problem with those is that they're intermittent. That's because the Sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. What we need, then, are efficient ways of storing energy: efficient batteries. Currently lithium ion batteries are being used but there are issues around their cost, how long they last, and their safety.
 
Donald Sadoway
Hope is on the horizon in the form of liquid metal batteries. At a recent event organised by the Newton Gateway to Mathematics in Cambridge we met Donald Sadoway who played a very important role in pioneering these batteries. In this podcast he talks to us what they are and why they are better, when they'll be commercially available, and why sometimes it's best to ignore the experts.
To watch a talk given by Sadoway at the Newton Gateway event go to the Newton Gateway website. And to find out more about magnetohydrodynamics, a theory that has been used to describe liquid metal batteries, go here.